Beauty and the Beast by Angela Brimhall Content Warnings: g*psy slur used (even if used in correct way still technically a slur), torture, death, violence, heterosexual relationships

So this was basically the story of Beauty and the Beast under the sea. I’m literally not kidding about this. Romani girl escaped her country with her family to escape persecution found more in Germany but heard of gentle prince in France so escaped to France to find him loses him becomes vindictive asshole to his brother and their descendants for the next century or so. The beginning few chapters you also need to pay attention to the chapter headings or else it’s jarring to jump year to year which took me a chapter to realize. Overall, it was an interesting take.

Literally, all I can describe this with is Hawaii in space. Like it was good but I couldn’t even connect it with a Beauty and the Beast re-telling. Just Hawaii in space. With the subplot of a mother trying to kill her son for political motivations.

I LOVED this one. First, it was flipped. Instead of the guy being the “beastly figure” it was the girl. Second, the guy was kind of useless but instead of being overly masculine and refusing to admit it and being all asshole about it he wasn’t and he admitted that he was useless. Which was really nice to see. The male posturing is exhausting to read and it’s nice to read a guy who has emotions other than “I’m a MAN and even if I’m useless I’m still THE MAN and better than a girl“. I mean the ending still essentially had him saving her but it wasn’t a matter of an ego thing. It was a matter of life or death thing.

This was more the traditional story where the prince is cursed by a fairy for his wickedness and has to learn to not be so wicked to regain humanity with a twist. Instead of just regular cursed and cursing all his servants he was cursed into werewolf and the castle is instead haunted by ghosts. The ghosts do all the cooking and cleaning and everything but also reflect to the beast what he is. Until he meets Arabella who also happens to be a werewolf shifter. But mostly it’s the traditional story with few deviances.

So, the main character only refers to themselves as non binary once in the story and that’s at the beginning and outside of that instance thinks of themselves (and everyone else thinks of them) as she/her. And I’m super uncomfortable with that. Kind of like the author wanted to write an enby character but wasn’t sure how to? Or didn’t know anyone to ask or something? I’m really not sure but that’s how it came across to me (as an enby person myself). But this was Beauty and the Beast and bigfoot and fae stories all rolled into one. Literally.

Overall, it was an enjoyable collection of stories. I just wish that there was more diversity in the stories and the authors than what was given. I love the re-tellings obviously because I live for re-tellings of things but some were more exciting than others and some felt a little flat.